If she’s a he, then she shouldn’t be allowed to compete against shes

South African athlete Caster Semenya, who identifies as a female, apparently doesn’ t have external male genitalia but has, in lieu of ovaries, undescended testicles that produce a significant amount of testosterone, the news media are reporting.

I’m no geneticist, but it seems to me that if you have testicles at all, you very most likely possess the male — XY — chromosomes.

Which makes you, biologically, a male, regardless of what is or is not between your legs — and regardless of whether you identify as a male or a female.

Therefore, Semenya’s biologically female competitors are correct – if Semenya possesses the XY chromosomes – that Semenya is a biological male.

Whether or not biological males and biological females should be allowed to compete against each other in athletics is an argument for another time. But if we accept that sex-based athletic segregation is appropriate, and Semenya is a biological male, then Semenya should not be allowed to compete against biological females. No argument.

In any case, Semenya’s reported internal testicles aside, does Semenya not look like a male?

Associated Press photos

Semenya has no breasts at all. I’m no physician, but this indicates to me that Semenya has little to no estrogen coursing through her veins. But her biologically female competitors presumably do have significant amounts of estrogen circulating within them. Whether or not it’s testosterone or estrogen that is predominant in one’s bloodstream would make a huge difference in athletic ability, it seems to me.

If Semenya wants to identify as a female, that’s fine with me; I’ll then consider Semenya to be a female.

But in the world of competitive athletics, someone possessing the XY chromosomes and a shitload of testosterone has an unfair advantage over those who possess the female (XX) chromosomes and are fueled by estrogen.

And I just can’t believe that I’ve gone this long without making a crack about the name “Semenya” in a post about someone with undescended testicles.

And I needed to write this in order to prove that I am able to write about a topic other than “Joe” Wilson. And I’ll stop now before I start commenting on his testicles.

P.S. The term “hermaphrodite” is misleading, so I don’t use it to describe Semenya. It is, to my knowledge, impossible to possess both testicles and ovaries; you have one or the other, regardless of what your external genitalia look like. It certainly is impossible to possess both reproductively functioning male and female reproductive organs. Even the term “intersex” I am not crazy about, because, again, regardless of what is or is not between your legs, you possess the XY or the XX chromosomes, not something in between, certain chromosomal abnormalities notwithstanding.

We will, we WILL muzzle you, ‘Joe’

One minute white supremacist Repugnican U.S. Rep. Addison Graves (a.k.a. “Joe”) Wilson of first-to-secede, land-o’-Strom-Thurmond South Carolina is sorry that he interrupted President Barack Obama’s nationally televised address to Congress on health-care reform Wednesday night, and the next minute Wilson is acting as though he’d simply been appropriately exercising his right to free speech.

“On these issues I will not be muzzled. I will speak up and speak loudly against this risky [health-care] plan,” Wilson huffs and puffs in a stilted, deer-in-headlights video that he put on his website in which he martyrs himself.

“Muzzled”?

It’s yet another fucking case of a fucking Repugnican claiming to be a poor victim — and trying to rewrite history.

Oh, sure, yeah, Wilson was just appropriately voicing his dissent on the issue of health-care reform by screaming “You lie!” during the president’s nationally televised address before Congress. Because that was the most appropriate forum for Wilson to voice his dissent on the matter. Surely. No doubt.

I mean, if a Democrat had done that to “President” George W. Bush,  surely the Repugnicans would not have had a problem with it, being the free-speech lovers that they are. Never would a Repugnican “muzzle” a Democrat or other political opponent. Never.

Wilson is a racist asshole who needs to go down. I don’t know how safe he is in his congressional district, but thus far his 2010 Democratic opponent Rob Miller since Wednesday night has raised almost three quarters of a million dollars as I type this sentence. To my knowledge, Wilson’s fellow white supremacists thus far have been able to scrape together less than half of that since he made a national ass of himself on Wednesday night.

A nationwide attack on Wilson might be what it takes to bring him down.

After all, it took a nationwide attack on the racist South — first with the Civil War and then with the civil rights movement — to first end the slavery of blacks and then to put an end to the worst of the post-emancipation attacks on blacks in the South. (Emphasis on “to put an end to the worst of”…)

It’s the year 2009 and Wilson and his ilk have got to go. And we can rid our nation of their embarrassing stain once and for all, but it apparently will take a national effort to do it, since they seem to be fairly protected in their provincial bastions of ignorance and hatred.

So if you haven’t given to Wilson’s opponent Rob Miller, please do so — he’s on his way to the $1 million mark, and it takes money for an outsider to oust an incumbent, even such a loathesome assbite as incumbent Wilson.

Wilson is no victim. When he screamed, “You lie!” at President Barack Obama on Wednesday night, he attracted the national spotlight to himself.

Lots of interesting facts about him are coming to light since he put himself into the national spotlight. I already told you that his real, Richie-Rich name is Addison Wilson (not Joe) Graves and that he was an aide to one of the nation’s most renowned racists, Strom Thurmond, who ran for president in 1948 on the segregationist ticket before he became a U.S. Senator for South Carolina.

Thurmond, ironically, impregnated his family’s 16-year-old black maid – because that’s the kind of thing that the “family values” and “moral values” Repugnicans do: speak out vehemently against blacks and then impregnate the family’s teenaged black maid – and after Thurmond’s long overdue death in 2003, Thurmond’s daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, went public with the fact that he was her father.

“Joe” Wilson promptly attacked her for having made the secret public; apparently she should have taken the secret with her to her grave, because it was embarrassing to the otherwise-pristine memory of Strom Thurmond. In Wilson’s book, she should have kept her fucking mouth shut — you know, like a good black person would do in the South! 

Other facts about the blue-eyed devil* Wilson are here.

Finally, I am happy to see this short news item today from The Associated Press:

Washington, D.C. – Democratic leaders are planning to vote early next week to admonish Republican Rep. Joe Wilson if he does not apologize on the House floor for yelling “You lie!” at President Barack Obama [on Wednesday night during Obama's nationally televised address to Congress on health-care reform].

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said party leaders decided at a meeting [yesterday] that they will likely move forward with a resolution of disapproval against Wilson absent another apology.

Wilson apologized to Obama after the incident on Wednesday, but he has refused requests to apologize to the House. Wilson’s office says the congressman considers his initial apology sufficient.

Democrats say the insult clearly violated House rules of decorum.

Yup. And if the Democrats don’t nail Wilson, other stupid white men in Congress who can’t get over the fact that the party of stupid white men lost the presidential election in 2008 — and to a black! man! — will sense, correctly, that the Democratic leadership is wussified, and they will follow Wilson’s lead and continually disrupt Congress and disrespect President Obama in ways that they never would have allowed George W. Bush to be disrespected, even though the election-stealing, bogus-war-launching, mass-murdering dictator Bush never was, is not, and never will be worthy of a drop of respect.

Assholes like Addison Graves Wilson don’t get the concept of mercy. In their profound fucktardation, it’s entirely lost on them; they take mercy as weakness instead of what it actually is: strength. So we show them no fucking mercy.

After all, they would show us none.

*For the record, I have blue eyes. But I’m angelic.

‘Joe’ Wilson’s opponent Rob Miller rakes in $200K after ‘You lie!’ outburst

Updated below

The Associated Press reports today, although it’s all the way at the end of the news story:

Back on [Repugnican U.S. Rep. Addison Graves] Wilson’s home turf, the ["You lie!"] uproar turned into a boon for Democrat Rob Miller, his opponent in next year’s midterm elections.

In the first 24 hours after Wilson’s outburst, Miller’s campaign coffers swelled by $200,000, according to Jessica Santillo of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The contribution, she said, came in from 5,000 individual contributions.

Yes!

And according to Wikipedia, “In the 2008 general election, [Wilson] won 54 percent of the vote to Rob Miller’s 46 percent, the closest race in the district in 20 years.”

Congressional races take money, so if you can give Rob Miller a donation, please do so! You can do so by clicking here.

I think that Miller can take Wilson down this time, so that your donation wouldn’t be a waste of your money.

(Miller needs to get his campaign website up and running ASAP, though; robmillerforcongress.com is not working…)

Finally, the news media are reporting that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi isn’t seeking Wilson’s head on a silver platter for his unprecedented-at-least-in-modern-times outburst, and President Barack Obama has said that he has accepted Wilson’s apology, noting that “we all make mistakes.”

Um, sure, we all make mistakes, but how many of us heckle the president of the United States of America while he (or she — one day…) is delivering a nationally televised address to Congress?

I’m not sure whether the Democratic leadership is doing the politically smartest thing by not appearing to be too vengeful or whether they’re shooting themselves in the feet yet once again by appearing to be too wussified.

Anyone who cares to chime in on that question, please leave a comment below.

Update (7:40 p.m.):

The Associated Press now puts Democrat Rob Miller’s post-“Joe”-Wilson-outburst take at $500,000 thus far. Talk about your unintended consequences!

While Wilson’s bullshit might play well in his own congressional district — that the people of his district would elect him repeatedly says a lot about the people of his district, I surmise — he has further harmed his party, which is a national party no more. 

And that’s priceless.

Addison Graves (a.k.a. ‘Joe’) Wilson was aide to racist icon Strom Thurmond

Associated Press photo

Just your average Addison Graves: Politically dead man walking U.S. Rep. “Joe” Wilson, pictured during President Barack Obama’s nationally televised speech on health-care reform, during which Wilson yelled out to Obama, “You lie!”

Shit, all I did was enter “Joe Wilson” into Wikipedia.org’s search bar and I learned that the Repugnican U.S. representative from South Carolina’s real name is Addison Graves Wilson Sr.

How do you get Joe from Addison Graves?

But Joe sure sounds a lot more folksy, doesn’t it? You betcha! You’ve never heard of any Addison Graves the Plumbers, have ya? I mean, you probably wouldn’t want to have a beer with an Addison Graves, but how about a beer with a Joe?

Wikipedia also notes that Addison Graves the Plumber was an aide to the infamous racist South Carolina politician Strom Thurmond, who in 1948 ran for president on the segregationist States’ Rights Democratic Party (“Dixiecrat”) ticket.

As Addison Graves (doesn’t that sound like a medical disorder? “Addison-Graves Disease” or something?) was born in 1947, Thurmond’s racist past had to have been known to him when he decided to become Thurmond’s aide.

Thankfully, Thurmond finally died and went to hell in 2003.

Hopefully, we’ll see Addison Graves’ political death soon. And then maybe we can say that he politically died from Addison-Graves Disease.

I just gave Repugnican Joe Wilson’s 2010 Dem opponent $20.10 — no lie!

I have dial-up (don’t laugh) and so I haven’t watched President Barack Obama’s nationally televised speech on health-care reform from tonight. It’s a bit late, so nor have I even read the transcript, but I’ll do one or the other or both soon.

But, of course, the big news from tonight’s speech is that Repugnican U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina — the first state that seceded from the Union, even before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated (I’ll never tire of repeating that historical fact) — shouted during Obama’s speech, “You lie!” when Obama was talking about how his health-care reform plans would affect illegal immigrants.

I did watch a clip of that, however, as the clip is only half a minute long (dial-up, remember!), and while Wilson’s “You lie!” shout-out sounds like just another stupid white man being a dick, I find Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s facial expression in response to Wilson’s unprecedented presidential interruption to be much more interesting.

Pelosi understandably is aghast at the incredibly inexcusable outburst, and my guess is that there will be hell to pay. If I were Wilson, I’d fear the wrath of Nancy right about now.

Wilson later issued a statement regarding his pathetic behavior unbefitting an elected official: “This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the president’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill,” he said in the statement.

I doubt that Wilson truly was so overcome with emotion that he felt the need to interrupt a president’s nationally televised address. Especially with, “You lie!”

I mean, whenever “President” George W. Bush’s lips were moving during a nationally televised address, he actually was lying, but not once during the unelected, mass-murdering dictator Bush’s eight long years of ruinous rule did any Democrat (or independent, for that matter) yell out during one of Bush’s nationally televised addresses, “You lie!”

Wilson, I think, rather than having experienced an episode of Tourette’s, took a political gamble and lost. I suspect that he thought that he’d be viewed as hot shit, at least in his first-to-secede home state of South Carolina, for trying to humiliate the nation’s first black president before a national television audience.

Again, he gambled — and he lost.

I just gave Wilson’s 2010 Democratic opponent Rob Miller a donation of $20.10 for his 2010 race against Wilson. If you are as pissed off as I am at what South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson did tonight and you want to help Miller out, you can donate too by clicking here.

Wikipedia notes: “In the 2008 general election, [Wilson] faced his stiffest competition to date: Rob Miller won 46 percent of the vote to Wilson’s 54 percent, the closest race in the district in 20 years.” So yes, you could make a difference for Miller in 2010!

In praise of other writers

I’m going to do something that writers don’t often do, either because of their egos or because it’s frowned upon to talk about the craft (perhaps this being considered to be too boring or too nerdy or maybe even kind of like a magician talking about the technical aspects of magic): I’m going to praise some recent writing that I’ve seen on the ‘Net.

First, there is Bill Moyers’ line about “the creature from the Second Amendment who showed up at the president’s rally armed to the teeth.” “Creature from the Second Amendment” — that’s priceless. (And a potential title should Michael Moore ever desire to make a sequel to “Bowling for Columbine.”)

Now, I’m all for the Second Amendment — after all, we need to be able to protect ourselves from the armed but brainless dipshits who think that bringing an assault rifle to a public political rally is an acceptable form of free speech.

Seriously, though, I am for the Second Amendment — but the spirit of the Second Amendment is that you get to protect yourself from real danger. The spirit of the Second Amendment is not that you to intimidate people by showing up at public events locked and loaded; that is an abuse of the Second Amendment, just like screaming “Fire!” in a jam-packed movie theater is an abuse of the First Amendment.

Moyers also recently cleverly wrote:

Bill Maher asked me on his show last week if America is still a great nation. I should have said it’s the greatest show on earth. Forget what you learned in civics about the Founding Fathers — we’re the children of Barnum and Bailey, our founding con men. Their freak show was the forerunner of today’s talk radio.

And Moyers continues, talking to President Obama:

No one’s ever conquered Washington politics by constantly saying “pretty please” to the guys trying to cut your throat….

Come on, Mr. President. Show us America is more than a circus or a market. Remind us of our greatness as a democracy.

When you speak to Congress next week, just come out and say it. We thought we heard you say during the campaign last year that you want a government-run insurance plan alongside private insurance…. Open to all individuals and employees who want to join and with everyone free to choose the doctors we want.

We thought you said Uncle Sam would sign on as our tough, cost-minded negotiator standing up to the cartel of drug and insurance companies and Wall Street investors whose only interest is a company’s share price and profits….

This healthcare thing is make or break for your leadership, but for us, it’s life and death. No more Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. President. We need a fighter. 

Yup.

That’s some pretty good writing.

Then there is Maureen Dowd’s latest column echoing much the same sentiments titled “Less Spocky, More Rocky,” in which Dowd asserts, as the title of her column indicates, that President Barack Obama could be less controlled and logical and above it all, like Mr. Spock, and instead, like Rocky Balboa, take the gloves off already. (“[Obama] can live long and prosper by being less Spocky and more Rocky,” Dowd creatively concludes her column.)

Now, I often can’t get through a Dowd column. She too often tries to be funny but instead falls flat — I usually hate it when she makes up “comedic” dialogue (if she wanted to be a playwright, she should have been a playwright, not a columnist) – and she seems to love to dazzle us with her cultural references that, if we want to know what the fuck she’s saying, we have to Google. (She doesn’t even do the courtesy of giving us links to her obscure reference.)

But if Dowd came up with “less Spocky, more Rocky” on her own, then kudos to her, because it’s pretty clever, like “the creature from the Second Amendment.”  

Anyway, in “Less Spocky, More Rocky,” Dowd writes:

Sometimes, when you’ve got the mojo, you have to keep your foot on your opponent’s neck. When you’re trying to get a Sisyphean [my link, not Dowd's] agenda passed, it’s good if people in the way — including rebellious elements in your own party — fear you.

Civil discourse is fine, but when the other side is fighting dirty, you should get angry. Don’t let the bully kick sand in your face….

It was one thing for Obama to delegate freely when he was on the Harvard Law Review, but it’s madness to go play golf and delegate freely to Congress, letting Nancy Pelosi make your case. After signaling that there was nothing he’d fall on his sword for on health care; after dropping Van Jones at the first objection from Glenn Beck — a demagoon who called Obama a “racist” — the president is getting to be seen as an easy mark…. 

Yup. Civil discourse works only with civil individuals.

That’s why I write such things as “Glenn Beck Must Die” as a potential book title and “Just shoot me. (But only after you shoot Glenn Beck.)”

Do I really advocate for the murder of Glenn Beck? Oh, as tantalizing as the fantasy is, no, I do not, and if I had Beck’s face in the sights of my assault rifle that I’d brought to a public rally, perhaps a “tea party” – you know, because I’m all about the Second Amendment ‘n’ stuff – would I pull the trigger? Oh, no, very most likely not, unless it was a clear-cut case of self-defense.

But am I too timid to shy away from anything other than “civil” discourse?

Oh, fuck no.

Most of the wingnuts most likely won’t go any further than issuing words, so it’s pretty safe to issue words back.

When we progressives don’t fight back — when we opt to be “Spocky” instead of “Rocky” — this only emboldens the winguts and they win, even though they are only the vocal minority.

It’s time to shout them back down.

Assorted shit

I’ve seen at least two articles — one by Arianna Huffington and the other on AlterNet.org — that posit that the ouster of Van Jones as a “green jobs” adviser from the Obama White House is the best thing that could have happened to Jones.

The idea apparently is that Jones will be able to do a lot more from outside of the White House than he could do from within it.

This seems logical. I mean, I can’t imagine working for the White House communications team, for instance. I mean, assuming that I could even get on the White House communications team, with my profanity-laced Internet screeds that date back to 2002 (um, Repugnicans aren’t just assholes, but they’re dirty fucking assholes) – and I couldn’t (so much for free fucking speech in the “land of the free”) – I’d have to be “proper” and “professional” all the time.

In other words, I couldn’t be myself. Just shoot me. (But only after you shoot Glenn Beck.)

Anyway, notes Huffington:

…No longer tied to his desk with a sock in his mouth, Van [Jones] is now freed to do what he does best: inspire and energize groups around the country. Student groups and labor groups and small business groups and middle class Americans everywhere who are losing jobs and losing homes and losing hope.

He’s free to push with all his might and insight for the vision tens of millions of Americans tirelessly worked for during the presidential campaign — the vision they voted for in November — but which is now in danger of being drowned in the fetid political swamps of Washington.

If Glenn Beck had any sense at all, he would have done everything in his power to keep Van Jones right where he was….

Huffington goes on in her piece to eschew the 9/11 “conspiracy theorists,” and I don’t understand this bandwagon, the need to frantically position oneself into one extreme camp or the other — usually into the camp that of course the unelected Bush regime that (after it stole the 2000 presidential election) lied about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and fabricated color-coded “terrorism alerts” and just allowed Hurricane Katrina to ravage New Orleans never would have just let 9/11 happen!

My stance on 9/11 is that while I am not comfortable going so far as to say that the Bush regime orchestrated 9/11, I certainly wouldn’t put it past the Bush regime to have had a good idea that it was going to happen but at the minimum to have been nonchalant about it. I mean, again, look how well the unelected Bush regime handled Hurricane Katrina, for which there had been plenty of warning!

The AlterNet.org article, by executive editor Don Hazen, is titled “Five Reasons Why Van Jones and Progressives are Better Off with Jones Out of the White House” and gives these five reasons: ”Now he’s a household name” (and “Now he has a national stage”); “He’s been rescued from obscurity” (a bit redundant); ”He’s the leader progressives need” (kind of like a New & Improved Barack Obama! — Now With Balls!, I guess); ”He has a renewed charge to speak the truth”; and “He can provide real vision and organizing framework.”

While I think that it would be incredibly ironic if Jones, thanks to Glenn Beck, became the kind of progressive leader that Obama promised to be but hasn’t been, I can’t say that I agree with Hazen’s assertion that Jones can be more effective than even Michael Moore can be (I mean, racism most likely always will work against Jones, and Moore doesn’t have that particular problem).

And I cringed to read Hazen’s quasi-likening of Van Jones to Al Sharpton in that Sharpton first came into the limelight with some notoriety but now is a well-known guy, and that the same might happen for Jones. Gee, I certainly hope that Jones doesn’t follow the self-serving blowhard Sharpton’s (or Jesse Jackson’s) path…

(Not to say that neither Sharpton nor Jackson ever accomplished anything worthwhile, but these days they’re little but media whores for every black issue that comes up, such as even the death of Michael Jackson, which, from what I can tell, had to do with Michael Jackson, not with racism.)

Van Jones can do much better than that, and I suspect that he will.

While Huffington needs to cool her rhetoric on the 9/11 stuff, since she doesn’t have any more information about what, if any, role that the Bush regime played in 9/11 (even just permitting it to happen) than I do or you do, I do like her final statement on Jones:

Glenn Beck has taken Van out of his in-the-shadows position and thrust him into the spotlight. I told Van after his resignation that I hope he will take the extra attention and energy Beck created for him and, like a jujitsu black belt, turn the blow into an opening, an opportunity to transform the negative attack into something positive for himself and for the country.

Yup. As I noted, I’d never even heard of Van Jones before the racist, fascist, dipshit wingnut Glenn Beck decided to gun for Jones, but now the paperback edition of Jones’ best-selling 2008 book The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems is on my amazon.com wish list. It is to be released on September 29, and it would be fucking great if Jones’ book surpasses any of Beck’s on the best-seller lists.

Finally, is Van Jones one burning hot hunk of a man or what?

He gets me all fired up about environmentalism… Is it hot in here or is it me or is it global warming?

Thank you, Glenn Beck, you fugly son of a bitch, for putting this beautiful hunk of man into the national spotlight, where he belongs.

…

Over lunch today my brother and I discussed that surely the wingnuts have claimed that the Obama adminstration had a socialist indoctrination speech all ready to go for the nation’s schoolkiddies today – but he scrapped it at the last minute only because of pre-emptive wingnut outrage.

Sure enough, I see this in Salon.com’s War Room from today:

…Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer, who’d been one of the most high-profile critics of [Obama's back-to-school] address, terming it “indoctrination,” conceded that it was a good speech — even one he’d want his kids to hear. But he wasn’t willing to drop his allegations completely.

“Now that the White House got their hand in the cookie jar caught, they changed everything, they redid the lesson plans, they released the text, and tomorrow he’s gonna give a speech that every president should have an opportunity to give,” Greer said [yesterday].

“I would anticipate, based on this president being so vocal and so aggressive about his vision of America, where government is in every aspect of our lives, I believe that the speech that he was gonna give, based on the lesson plans, is different.”

Oh, puhfuckinglease. Yes, some wording of the optional lesson plan accompanying Obama’s back-to-school address was changed because it was viewed as too political — schoolkids were asked how they would help the Obama administration reach national educational goals or something like that — but that hardly means that Obama was poised to turn our precious little freedom-lovin’ ones into frothing-at-the-mouth, flag-burning pinkos.

And it’s not like Obama could have said anything that he wanted to the nation’s schoolchildren — such as to report their parents to him via the White House website if their parents they think that Sarah Palin-Quayle would make a great president, you betcha! – and there would have been no blowback from that.

Of course, the wingnuts’ biggest problem with Barack Obama is that he’s presiding while black.

You can’t be blatantly racist these days, so before Obama was elected president, code for “He’s a nigger!” was “He’s a Muslim!” (To this day the xenophobic, racist, fucktarded wingnuts call Obama “Osama” and emphasize that his middle name is Hussein.) Today, the most commonly used wingnut code for “He’s a nigger!” is “He’s a socialist!”

My black sisters and brothers, this white gay man apologizes to you for those members of his race who hate you for your race — but who still call themselves “Christians.” (Most of them, anyway.)

…

For more assorted shit, please see yesterday’s post on Labor Day if you haven’t already. The stuff on Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” and Oliver Stone’s “South of the Border” got a bit buried, but I’m too lazy to dig it out.

Thoughts on this Labor Day

A nationwide Gallup poll taken last month on the state of labor in the United States is dismal but not surprising.

When asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of labor unions?”, 48 percent of the respondents said they approve, 45 percent said they disapprove, and 7 percent said they weren’t sure.

Only about one in five of the poll respondents reported having someone in their household who is a member of a labor union.

When asked whether they believe that in the future labor unions will become stronger, will become weaker, or will remain the same as they are today, 48 percent said weaker, 24 percent said stronger, 24 percent said the same, and 4 percent said they were unsure.

I’m a member of a union, albeit a weak one, so I guess that makes me one of the one in five Americans or so who are a member of a labor union. That number should be much higher.

I’m no expert on the history of labor unions, but it seems to me that labor unions took several hits over several decades.

From 1981 to 1989 were the Reagan years, and then from 1989 to 1993 were the George Bush I years — 12 years of anti-labor sentiment in the White House. Then from 1993 to 2001 were the Clinton years, and centrist Clinton was weak on supporting labor, to put it mildly. Then from 2001 to 2009 were eight more years of a Repugnican in the White House. So for almost 30 years, labor unions haven’t had a strong ally in the White House.

No wonder labor unions are on life support.

My main problem with the labor movement and labor unions is that their approach has been to beg for scraps from the rich.

Wrong approach.

The right approach is for the people to own the means of production — not to beg the rich who own the means of production for a few more crumbs.

Which, of course, makes me a communist or socialist.

Proud of it!

Speaking of anti-capitalism, the wingnuts are going to go even more ape shit shortly with the release of two anti-capitalist films.

First and foremost, of course, is Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story,” set for release on October 2. I’m so there on opening day.

In case you have been living in a cave with Osama bin Laden and don’t know Moore’s stance on capitalism, he says this about it: ”Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that’s good for all people, and that something is called democracy.”

I wholeheartedly concur. An economic system that is based upon greed can’t be good. To get filthy rich, you have to pay your employees much less than the fair value of their labor, and you have to charge your customers much more than the fair value of the good or service that you provide.

Whom would Jesus screw over? Funny how the wingnuts equate capitalism with Christianity when surely Jesus would have none of capitalism’s obvious evils.

Further, as Moore indicates, we no longer have democracy in the United States, because democracy is rule by the people. We have corporatocracy — rule by the corporations, which need to be contained. And democracy needs to be restored.

I also read today that Oliver Stone has made a film about Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, whom for eight years the unelected, mass-murdering Bush regime called a “dictator,” even though Chavez, unlike the Bush regime, never stole a single fucking election and never killed a bunch of innocent people.

Reuters reports that Stone’s new film about Chavez, titled “South of the Border,” is “a sympathetic portrait of the leader, casting him as a champion of the poor who has stood up to Washington.” (Reuters calls the film a “documentary,” not a “docudrama” or the like.)

It sounds like Stone’s is a much different picture of Chavez than the Bush regime’s propagandists relentlessly painted, so Stone’s film, should it get a wide audience in the United States, should generate an interesting reaction among the fucktards who think that the capitalists and the corporations wuv them so much.

A face I’d like to punch

Why do alcoholics* like Glenn Beck get book deals?

He churns so many of them out that I have to ask: Does Beck even write his own books?

If I wrote a book, I think I’d title it Glenn Beck Must Die.

Because he must.

*Whether Beck still drinks or not I don’t know and don’t much care. To me, an “alcoholic” is one with the traits of incredible narcissism and highly disordered thinking, which for many if not most alcoholics seem to persist even after they manage to kick the bottle.

Spineless Democrats (redundant…) allow lynching of Van Jones

Associated Press photo

“Green jobs” czar Van Jones, pictured above in June 2009, has been sacrified upon the rock of political correctedness when wingnuts routinely make outrageous statements yet remain unscathed. Of course, a stupid white person can get away with a lot more than can a bright, progressive black man in the “post-racial” (yeah, right) United States of America. 

After former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge admitted what those of us who are sane and who pay attention already knew – that the unelected Bush regime would adjust its fucktarded color-coded terrorist strike alert system for political gain – then why is it considered to be so fucking insane to believe or even to suspect that the Bush regime might have (at the least) allowed 9/11 to happen?

“Green jobs” czar Van Jones resigned from the Obama administration after wingnuts revealed that Jones had signed a petition in 2004 that, according to The Associated Press, “asked for congressional hearings and other investigations into whether high-level government officials had allowed the [9/11] attacks to occur.”

I didn’t know who Jones was before this controversy du jour emerged. The AP notes that “Jones, well-known in the environmental movement, was a civil-rights activist in California before shifting his attention to environmental and energy issues. He is known for laying out a broad vision of a green economy. Conservatives have harshly criticized him for having left-wing political views.”

Oh, Jesus fuck. Like the unelected Bush regime wasn’t filled with right-wing loonies; the Obama administration is not allowed to have any left-wingers within its ranks, even though the unelected Bush regime was chock fucking full o’ wingnuts? Give me a fucking break.

I don’t know what Jones does or does not believe, and I’m sure the fact that he’s a black man is a factor in the white supremacist wingnuts’ dog pile upon him. I don’t see that signing a petition that calls for hearings and investigations on 9/11 means that you are a crazed 9/11 conspiracy theorist. Signing such a petition means that you support the issue being looked into.

Did even one of the Democratic Party’s supposedly most liberal members even have Jones’ back?

Fuck no.

Reports the AP:

[Howard] Dean, a former Vermont [governor] and [2004] Democratic presidential candidate [and former chair of the Democratic National Committee], [said]: “All of us campaigning for office have had people throw clipboards in front of our face and ask us to sign. And [Jones] learned the hard way you ought not to do that. But I don’t think he really thinks the government had anything to do with causing 9/11.”

Dean should have had Jones’ back and stated, correctly, that there’s nothing wrong with signing a petition asking for an inquiry. And Dean shouldn’t have spoken for Jones at to what Jones thinks about 9/11 or any other matter.

And Dean shouldn’t have added to the taboo of suggesting that perhaps the unelected Bush regime — which stole at least one presidential election, which started at least one bogus war by lying about the existence of weapons of mass destruction, and which lied about terrorist threats to the United States for political gain — at least knew about the 9/11 attacks but did nothing to prevent them.

After all, on August 6, 2001, “President” Bush did receive a presidential daily briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”

I don’t know whether the unelected Bush regime at least allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen or not — or whether the Bush regime even had an active hand in the events of Septemeber 11, 2001.

But I certainly don’t put it past a group of treasonous felons who stole an election, started a bogus war, and fucking tortured people that they indeed at least just let 9/11 happen.

Van Jones shouldn’t have been sacrificed upon the rock of political correctness for any understandable doubt that he might have had or still might have regarding 9/11.

And those who haven’t had Jones’ back, including, of course, those within the Obama administration, should be ashamed of themselves.

And if — when? — it finally comes to light that indeed the Bush regime at least allowed 9/11 to occur, will Jones get apologies and restitution?

Of course not. Because the people of the United States of Amnesia never have been big on admitting fault, taking blame and making amends.